"We have taken note of the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) decision, but we don't see that it has any direct implications for our investigation, for our discussions with Google, which are ongoing," Michael Jennings, a spokesman for the European Commission, told Reuters.

Google has been under pressure from Brussels since 2010 due to allegations that the search giant unfairly gives preference to its own services over those of competitors in its search results. Naturally, Google has denied the accusation.

"It may seem obvious, but people sometimes forget this—not every website can come out on top, or even appear on the first page of our results, so there will almost always be website owners who are unhappy about their rankings," wrote two Google vice presidents on the company's European Public Policy Blog in November 2010.

Cyrus Farivar
Cyrus is a Senior Tech Policy Reporter at Ars Technica, and is also a radio producer and author. His latest book, Habeas Data, about the legal cases over the last 50 years that have had an outsized impact on surveillance and privacy law in America, is due out in May 2018 from Melville House. He is based in Oakland, California. Emailcyrus.farivar@arstechnica.com//Twitter@cfarivar